Status

Affiliation

Residence

First Appearance

Contents

Appearance

Toren is a rather tall, taller than Erin at least, reanimated skeleton with yellow-white bones[1] that was assembled from pieces of Human, Gnoll, and Drake corpses,[2] resulting in a slightly mismatched appearance.[1]

The flames in the eye sockets were originally blue, but after assimilating some of the magic in the [Terror] gemstone, the flames turned purple.

Attire

In attire Toren has a slim, female figure, due to the bulges in the right place, and because of some curves that Toren had worked really hard to get right. She is wearing dirty clothing, ragged and tattered, wrapped and held in place with cloth fragments, gloves, a dark brown cloak, and a dark black mask with a shiny and rough surface, that covers the face, leaving only two narrow slits for eyes.[3]

Personality

Toren is a sapient skeleton, who has slowly evolved to become more and more self-aware.

For most of the story, his main priority is always Erin's orders, though he's been known to misconstrue them for his own gain. He enjoys battle and despises the idea of being replaced.

Due to Erin's increasingly frivolous and demeaning orders (more out of ignorance of Toren's intelligence and emerging sapience than anything else), Toren's desire for freedom has merged with his battle lust and with a general incomprehension to the value of sapient life. The imbalance creates urges that can be described as murderous and psychotic. Like a child, Toren does horrible acts and is, for the most part, unaware about how diabolic said actions are. These acts clash with a budding need for attention, even acknowledgement, that effectively makes Toren's behavior almost erratic.

Currently, Toren has a penchant for killing anybody that tries to order him against his will.[4]

Background

Chronology

Toren was created by Pisces, and was given to Erin, hoping that he protects her. Instead of being used as a bodyguard, as Pisces intended, Erin uses him as a barmaid, which often makes Pisces feel miserable, whenever he is reminded of it.

Toren leveled up various times due to battling with various Corusdeers, and an adventurergroups' construct, which resulted in him evolving into a Skeleton Knight.[5] After coming back from his training he discovers that Erin employed Lyonette, which resulted in him worrying about his future, as he feared he was being replaced. His relieve of learning that his fears don't seem to become true didn't last long, as Erin told him to teach Lyon. Not only is she preventing him from continuing his training in order to become strong enough to protect Erin, she revealed herself to be a huge annoyance— resulting in him beating her several times. After Erin ordered him to stop doing it, he had to think of alternatives, so he decided to poke her until she goes mad, or even going so far as to throwing her into a nest of Shield Spiders, and saved her only when she actually were about to come to harm, as Erin explicitly told him to prevent that.

Toren starts becoming more and more obsessed with leveling and has been massacring Corusdeers in the area which Erin sees when her, Toren, and Lyonette are out exploring various caves in the area. Since it has been snowing heavily around this time due to Erin getting the fairies drunk she has Toren pull her and Lyonette on a sled. This leads Toren to become resentful which leads to him betraying her and trying to get her killed by a bear, which Erin doesn't find out about until later.

After Erin and Pisces learned the crime Toren had committed, Erin accepted to let Pisces sever the bond between her and Toren, cutting off Toren's supply of mana thus almost killing him.

Toren survives by ripping the mana from the undead under his command and retreats into the dungeon which has more than enough mana in the air to keep him alive. After taking care of this immediate need, Toren sulks in a depression on the dungeon floor believing since his mana connection to Erin has been severed she is dead. Despite resenting Erin and trying to kill her he didn't believe she'd actually die and now his entire world means nothing since he failed in the one task commanded during his creation.

After finally getting over his depression somewhat he goes on to explore the dungeon killing various dungeon creatures. On one such exploration he comes across a group of dead adventurers where he dresses and pads his body mimicking a human female making himself more like Erin.

Powers and Abilities

Toren is able to run over 100 miles in less than a day.[6] He has the ability to sense mana, like ambient mana, and to look at something and tell where the mana was concentrated.[3]

Pisces had used 4 bones of [Archmage] Nekhret to give Toren the ability to restore himself no matter how badly he might be broken. Those bones are what makes him unique.[9] The 4 bones are: the second-lowest left rib, the tibia of the right shinbone, the left clavicle and the fourth rib from the top on the right side.[3]

“Protect Erin Solstice. Obey her. Be used in less-optimal tasks.” These were the words that shaped his existence.[10]

Toren used to enjoy killing things for no reason, but Toren gotten tired of doing so after the 2651 kill.[11]

Similar to Ijvani, Toren believes himself to be the strongest skeleton in the world.[11]

Quotes/Thoughts

Volume 1

(Thoughts) It scrubbed the ceiling with the fragment of the dustrag hard, wishing—as much as it could wish—that it held a weapon instead.

(Thoughts) He was guarding his master and that was well. But he had failed to guard a few days ago. He had lost to the Antinium, and that was wrong. Bad. He felt this should not be so.

Volume 2

(Thoughts) He— Had made Erin cry. Was it a bad thing? It wasn’t part of his orders. He was just supposed to obey Erin. Obey and protect and do non-optimal things. Nothing in his instructions mentioned making her happy or sad. So it didn’t matter. That was what Toren thought, and he tried thinking that thought quite hard. But it didn’t help. The sight and memory of Erin crying disturbed him in a way he couldn’t explain. It was… It was wrong. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t how things should have been.

(Thoughts) Where was he? White snow all around him, rolling hills and valleys around. Somewhere in the plains. He was lost. But that didn’t matter—he could always find Erin again. He was tethered to her. But she didn’t want him. She’d told him to ‘go away’. For how long? Forever? Toren didn’t want to go. But he had to. Those were the orders. They were one of the three things he remembered.